C. Schuchert — Russian Carboniferous and Permian. 143 



Art. X\ r . — The Russian Carboniferous and Permian com- 

 pared with those of India and America. A Review and 

 Discussion • by Charles Schuchert. 



[Continued from p, 46.] 

 Part III. The Work of Diener. 



1. The Permocarboniferous Fauna of Chitichun No. I. Mem. Geol. Surv. 

 India, ser. xv, Himala3 T an Fossils, vol. i, pt. 3, 1897, pp. 1-105, pis. i-xiii. 



2. The Permian Fossils of the Productus Shales of Kumaon and Gurhwal. 

 Ibid., pt. 4, 1897, pp. 1-54, pis. i-v. 



3. Permian Fossils of the Central Himdlayas. Ibid., pt. 5, 1903. pp. 1- 

 204, pis. i-x. 



In the central Himalayas at the limestone crag of Chitichun 

 Xo. 1, at an elevation of 17,700 feet, Griesbach, Midcllemiss, 

 and Diener, in the year 1892, discovered a lot of fossils 

 described in the work cited above (1). The stratigraphical results 

 of this collection are described by Diener on pp. 85-105, from 

 which are taken the following extracts : — 



" Karpinsky and Tschernyschew, two authors to whom the 

 most detailed studies of the Artinskian fauna are due, strongly 

 advocate the distinction of the permocarboniferous from carbon- 

 iferous and permian systems, and are decidedly averse to uniting 

 it with either the one or the other. Tschernyschew especially 

 strongly combats the view of the majority of geologists who 

 proposed to unite the permocarboniferous with the permian, 

 as a lower division of the system. According to him a separa- 

 tion of the permocarboniferous from the permian system is 

 demanded by the general aspect of the fauna, in which the 

 carboniferous types greatly predominate, chiefly among the 

 braehiopods. If it ought to be united either with the carbon- 

 iferous or permian system, in spite of its distinctly intermediate 

 position, it must necessarily be placed in the former, on the 

 strength both of the carboniferous character of its fauna and 

 of historical priority, since the Artinskian sandstone had been 

 correlated with the carboniferous millstone-grit of Western 

 Europe by Sir Roderick Murchison, who first introduced the 

 name permian. 



" Against the first argument the objection may be raised 



that notwithstanding the prevalence of carboniferous types in 



the Artinskian fauna, the latter i marks a very important 



moment in the history of development of organic remains, 



namely, the first appearance of true ammonites with complicated 



sutures.' Xor is the large percentage of carboniferous types 



in the Artinskian fauna an astonishing fact, in view of the 



absence of any break in the sequence of marine beds from the 



upper carboniferous to the true permian strata. Even in beds, 



which must be placed very high in the permian system, in the 



upper Productus limestones of the Salt Range and in the Oto- 



Aai. Jour. Sci— Fourth Series, Yol. XXII, No. 128.— August, 1906. 

 10 



